Chapter X - The Tickless Clock, Teleview, and the "Classified" Patent

hile I was in Detroit, I had started to invent - I
went back to my original aim of being an independent
inventor. I was able to get my own place to
experiment. I had two ideas I wanted to develop.
One was a mechanical tickless clock - because the
ticking of a clock annoys some people. The other was
three-dimensional motion pictures -- stereoscopic --
and this involved two cameras the same distance apart
as your eyes. Their pictures would be projected onto a
screen, superimposed. Then you needed a device to
divide the image so the right eye would see only what
the camera on the right saw, and vice versa. One
device, a bit corny, was red and green glasses.

Another way was to use a shutter that rotates before
your eyes, allowing each eye to see only what it is
supposed to. I left the Gray Motor Company, rented
space in a machine shop in Detroit, worked on both the
inventions and developed them.

To finance the tickless clock, I found three young
men who had some money and were interested, and after
much talk and planning they formed a company. I had
made a wind-up clock that didn't tick, and it worked;
I had demonstrated it to them. They wanted to build a
factory, but it turned out this would cost more than
they had. I had an idea I could get someone to make
it for a little more than a regular alarm clock. The
Ansonia Clock Company seemed the most likely. But we
couldn't get a reasonable price, so the clock never
was produced.

However, what Hammond learned about clocks from this
exploration was to come in very handy a few years
later, when the name Hammond would become associated
with clocks - - tickless, but of a very different
kind.

For the other invention I could make a demonstration
- not with movies, but with slides. I could show
two slides, one image projected upon the other; with a
magic lantern I could make an astonishing
demonstration - you'd see the figures come forward and
stand right out in space; if you really achieve a
proper stereoscopic projection, it's a perfectly
startling thing to see: the subjects hang out in the
air right in front of you. I had to find somebody to
put money into that. For I had already decided that I
would put my time in, but under no circumstance would
I ever put a cent of my money into any of my projects.
Because somebody else has to think well of your
invention, or maybe the whole thing is silly.

y mother said, "You know all sorts of people in
Chicago - why not go there and see if you can get some
money?"

I went there, and found there was a man named Barney
Goodspeed, a very wealthy man who had married a girl I
had used to take around in high school, and I called
up his wife and told her I had something that would
amuse her and her husband, and I was demonstrating
this thing in a rented room in an office building on
Michigan Avenue. I said, I'm not hiding from you that
I'm here trying to raise money, but not necessarily
from you. I want to demonstrate this thing - it's a
lot of fun to watch."

So she appeared with her husband. And I put on a
demonstration; and they were absolutely flabbergasted
- if you've never seen it before, it's an astonishing
thing. And this fellow said, "I have a friend who is
just wild about stereoscopic pictures. He has one of
these box things you sit in front of, and it has two
lenses, and you turn a crank, and you see the pictures
stereoscopically - and I know that he would be
interested in this thing. His name is John Borden."
Borden was a man with a very strange career. He had
been to Annapolis and in the navy for a short time,
and had inherited vast sums of money. And the first
three-quarter million he had inherited, he just blew
it all. But fortunately there was more. Well, Borden
came to see the pictures. And he said, "Why, I've
always been told it was impossible to project this
thing out like that. I understand exactly what it is,
but it's just absolutely remarkable. If this is going
to be a company in which I can buy an interest, why,
I'll tell you right now that I'm in."

oodspeed said, "What do you mean, you're in?"
"Well, said Borden, "You saw the fellow first, and
anything you don't want, I'll take."
"What do you mean, you'll take?" said Goodspeed.
"Well," Borden said, "I'll put in whatever it takes
to establish the company and make a movie and do
whatever needs to be done to give this thing a fair
shake. I can't imagine that a thing like this would
fail."

I spoke up and said, "Well, Mr. Borden, to get all the
equipment and get a movie made is, I think, a very
expensive thing. I don't really know how much it
takes. You sort of take my breath away when you say
you're just going to put in whatever is necessary, but
it takes a lot of money."
"Well", he said, "Make a guess."
I said, "Well, I should think the simplest
demonstration - I really can't answer - but it's a big
number - certainly over a hundred thousand dollars."
And he said, "Oh, well - naturally."
I said, "Well, I would think maybe two hundred
thousand dollars would give it some kind of trial -
but I have no actual knowledge about this thing. I
know about what I could build these slide things for,
but the movie isn't like this one - it will look
entirely different and work on an entirely different
principle, with a motor. And it's going to take a lot
of doing. We'll have to make enough of these to equip
a good-sized theatre, with one for every seat."
orden said, "Well, I tell you what we'll do. We'll
be partners in this thing, 50-50, and we have to make
our major decisions unanimously, but in case we don't
agree, then our mutual friend here, Barney, is to come
out and listen to us and he is to decide. How will
that be?"

I said, " I can't think of anything fairer than that,
provided Barney is willing to do all this."
Borden said, "Why, you're willing to do that, aren't
you Barney?"
And Barney said, "Well, seeing its you, O.K., O.K., I
will." The whole transaction was sold out like that -
he was practically the first person who had appeared -
the only one before him was Barney.

I eventually came up with a very ingeniously made
device with a little window, and inside was a whirling
shutter that made you see one picture with one eye
just as that picture was flashed on the screen - and
the next picture with the other eye just as that
picture was flashed on the screen. I had designed
the little motor that whirled the shutter,
synchronized with the projector motor - they were both
keeping time with the special generator, which I had
installed in the Selwyn Theatre in New York for this
purpose. We had rented the Selwyn, and each seat in
the theatre was equipped with one of these devices.
Meanwhile we had the problem of getting the motion
picture made. John Borden said, "Well, if you want a
really beautiful woman to put in the movie, I know
one. And I know her very well. She works for
Ziegfeld, and Ziegfeld refers to her as the most
beautiful woman in the world. The catch to it is that
her face, and the upper part of her body, are simply
marvelous, but she has funny legs. She cannot play
showgirl, but he uses her as the woman in the funny
sketch. If you're going to have a movie, I'd like her
to be in it."

o this brought up the situation of the sweetie-pie
of the man who was financing the production, where you
can't do anything about it. So we had her for the
heroine. For the leading man we got Grant Mitchell,
who was a very competent stage actor, but had never
been in the movies. We didn't know any movie star we
could get, but playing in our thing put him in the
movies, and he became successful in character parts in
the movies. I knew him for years.

As there weren't any movies in existence really
appropriate to this new technique, I had written the
scenario myself, but the property man didn't know
that. One day he found he was supposed to hoist in to
the sky a man holding a pair of enormous dumb-bells.
"I didn't know who wrote this," he announced, "but I
know he's a fool."

Our production was called Teleview. We made the
picture, had contracted for the theatre, and it was
going to open as an accomplished fact on December
27th, 1922, when lo and behold I found another patent
in which a man had invented a pair of glasses that
were going to be worn by the viewer, and the glasses
had two little shutters in them - individual to each
eye - to look at the picture. Now the actual
structure that he had was not a practical thing, but
the patent claim read smack on the thing we were going
to open. So I told John Borden about this, and said I
was going to go out there and see what I could do. In
those days you didn't fly, you went on the train. I
rode out to Los Angeles on the train, and so I had a
lot of time to think about how I was going to approach
this fellow to buy his patent for very little money.
And I hit upon an idea, which was very successful with
him. I went in and said I had just read his patent
and I was overwhelmed by what a wonderful idea this
thing was - this thing should be worth millions of
dollars - I laid it on terribly thick, and I was
terribly naive about all this -- we could go in and we
could do this and we could do that --.

he man that was out there had a little engraving
business. Well, I appeared to be so terribly naive
about this thing; I said I can put through this, and
the movie companies will all buy it, and so on; and of
course by that time he'd had this patent for a long
time and he'd tried to make it work, but he hadn't
been able to; he'd built some models, but he couldn't
make anything work, and as far as he was concerned,
the whole thing was useless. And I was so damned
naive the way I talked that he granted me a license to
use his invention - because he knew the thing he had
was unsalable - for a ridiculously small sum of money.

I'm sure that if I'd acted in a more sophisticated
way, he might have smelt a rat; and I thought, boy,
will he be surprised! There was an article that was
about to appear in the Literary Digest with a great
big picture of me, sitting in a chair with a thing in
front of my face, and saying that it was about to be
produced - the whole thing was just going to break in
any moment, you see. But I got a license.

When Teleview opened at the Selwyn, Abie's Irish Rose
had just started. Ethel Barrymore was starring in
Romeo and Juliet, Jeanne Eagels in Rain. In the
movies were Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood, Nazimova
in Salome, Jackie Coogan in Oliver Twist; Will Rogers,
Mary Pickford and Harold Lloyd were being featured,
and Marian Davies was billed in When Knighthood was in
Flower. Broadway was at its height - and so was
Hammond's anticipation.

Well, the Teleview pictures were marvelous -
incredibly clear. "You couldn't see that anything was
moving in that little window you looked through, but
it gave the element of depth. You would see trains go
right by you, and children swim right over you," says
one who saw them. But they couldn't tell a story -
they put you up too close. When we showed the Grand
Canyon, or Indians, doing a war-dance, it didn't
matter, - but who wants to look up the heroine's
nostrils? It showed you things you didn't want to see
- all the perspiration on the actress's forehead under
the Kleig lights. You couldn't follow the story - the
details were too confusing. But it was the most
marvelous photography you'd ever seen.

Perhaps, as the New York Times indicated, the
photoplay, unlike the shorts, was a bit tedious. At
any rate, something happened that had never happened
on Broadway:
People would leave the theatre when the story began;
they'd get up and go out and say, "Where's the box
office?" and buy tickets for their friends, saying,
"Oh, Joe would love this!" But they'd seen it, as far
as they were concerned. There was no more
entertainment in it for them.

Well, when I realized that the thing wasn't going to
play, I cried in my sleep, so that when I woke up in
the morning, I found out, though I hadn't been aware
or it, that the whole pillow and the top of the bed
was drenched with my tears which I'd cried during my
sleep. Oh, that was a most God-awful thing. We had
to close at the end of two weeks.

The movies and the radio industry all got it wrong.
People would say, "Well, Hammond, if you could only
put this thing on without that funny gadget on the
chair, then you'd really have something."

The only person who got it right was my sister
Eunice. She said, "Larry, who asked you to put three
dimensions into the movies? That's ridiculous! If
you could abstract the pictures, it would improve
them. The story's the thing; it isn't actresses
running in and out of doorways."

Years later, people put on 3-D movies where they gave
out red and green spectacles to the audience, and the
first ones shown made money, and it was a great
novelty, and so everyone wanted to be in it, and so
then - that was strictly Hollywood - the Hollywood
people immediately set their hounds to find out who
had ever done anything like this - so of course they
all found me. And lo and behold one day suddenly the
telephone started to ring, and the operator would
start to say, "It's somebody from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
who wants permission to talk to you." I'd say, "Put
him on."
Then the man would start in right away on; "We
understand that you are the man who knows the most
about stereoscope motion pictures, and that you did
this years ago, and we want to make a stereoscopic
picture, and we would like to see if we could get some
information from you, and if you will just consent to
it, we'll send a little delegation out right away to
interview you."

I think I would have succumbed to letting them come
out, except that they all kept calling up at once. It
was going to be a pest. So I just got very tough
about it, and just begged off, and said, "Well, you
can call try it with red and green glasses and make
your movie and distribute the glasses; but people
aren't going to like it; it's just a flash in the pan.
People just don't take that idea seriously. It isn't
going to be any good." I said that to everybody - all
of which was perfectly true, because that's the way it
came out.

John Borden took his financial loss as a good sport.
Twenty-five years later when Hammond discovered that
Borden had run through all his fortune and was almost
destitute, he acquainted relatives of Borden with the
fact and contributed with them to the support of the
man who had financed his first venture. He continued
his support as long as Borden lived. If Borden had to
lose all his money, it was fortunate for him he lost
part of it backing someone who would take care of him
at the end, when he was down and out.*

fter the Selwyn performance closed down, D.W.
Griffiths was making pictures at Mamaroneck, N.Y. He
thought Teleview would be commercial, and he had me
come out and make pictures with my double-lens camera
beside his photographer, Billy Bitzer; but by that
time I had great reservations about Teleview.
Griffiths had made Little Old New York, featuring
Marian Davies dressed kind of like a boy with a cap.
She looked cute and attractive, at least in single
lens photography. He showed the movie to William
Randolph Hearst. But Hearst spent most of his time
kissing Marian Davies: he didn't watch the movie.
This kind of thing unsold me on the production.

It was about that time that I had an idea about how
to save movie theatres a lot of money. The moving
projector in those days contained a powerful arc
light. Now, you could run those arc lights on
alternating current, with transformers, and things
like that, but the light actually goes out 120 times a
second, and that has a way of heterodyning with the
passage of the films, and you get flickering movies.
When there is a big direct current grid, as there was
in New York City, you get an arc that is perfectly
stable - but there again you waste an awful lot of
current, Because you have to have resistors, and that
wastes a lot of money, as I found out in my high
school days. Now I thought of another way of doing
it, and that is to put in series with the arc a motor
which draws current and acts as the resistor, and have
that motor drive a generator which generates direct
current, and you can feed that back into the system in
such a way that you have a stable arc light and you're
not wasting any electricity at all!

Well, I thought, maybe I'll offer this thing to some
Theatres, and I can just make this up by ordering
standard pieces of equipment from somebody - General
Electric is the best, I guess - and then connect them
in this way. But I must be sure and patent the way to
do it. Otherwise, nothing will prevent other people
from buying equipment and hooking it up this way. So
I went to my patent attorney - I was always connected
with a patent attorney - and I explained this thing
and drew a diagram and told him to make a search and
apply for a patent if it was patentable.

Then I went down to the General Electric office on
Broadway and talked to an engineer and said I wanted
to get a price on what they would sell me this and
that for, in their catalog. And I explained this idea
that I had that I thought might be salable to movie
theatres, but that I wanted to find what the pieces
would cost.

He was going to submit prices. Then I called the
patent attorney. And he said, "Well, your thing is
exactly anticipated by a patent, which was assigned to
the General Electric Company." The inventor was an
employee in the General Electric Company, and the
company had patented this thing because it was going
to be of use on battleships, saving current, and so
they could have more and bigger searchlights. And the
patent was identical to mine - even the diagrams
looked alike. So when I saw that, I thought, oh, good
God, there goes another idea - there's no use pursuing
that.

But then I got a call from General Electric. It was
the engineer. He said, "Mr. Hammond, I have now all
the information you want and we are ready to supply
you with this equipment - but we'd like you to talk to
one of our vice-presidents - he says the General
Electric Company thinks this is a wonderful idea, and
they don't see why you should struggle with a thing
like this - why not just sell them a license under
your patent? We're prepared to pay you very good
royalties, and this should turn out to be a very good
thing for you, and we think we can sell a lot of these
things, not only in New York, but everywhere."

I said, "Well, that's all very wonderful, but the
fact is that the thing belongs to you."
And he said, "What do you mean, belongs to us?"
And I said, "Well, you have a patent that is
precisely the same thing that I applied for - and it
belongs to you."
"Well, we don't know anything about that", he said,
"We referred this thing to our Patent Department, and
they said this seemed to be a very patentable thing,
and we're prepared to buy the patent or pay you a very
substantial sum of money."

"Well", I said, I don't think you can very well pay
me for something that really belongs to you.**"

Because it was for use on battleships, the patent had
been filed away with some classified information - and
they had forgotten all about it - didn't even know
they owned it!

*This is only one example of Hammond's generosity to
old friends in need.
**This was no five-dollar derby hat.

ęCopyright 1974, Stuyvesant Barry All Rights Reserved May not be copied, published, used on anyone else's web pages or in any way without express written permission.

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